I have been a bit busy and have not made any overt progress on my esm line
of pack robots. I am very impressed with the level of information that steve
and the rest of you guys manage to track down and post. I sure hope that
the site owners are considering ways to make money off of this site, so that
this valuable online learning experience can be improved and remain available
online indefinately. Further, as it continues growing we will need better
knowledge base engines and perhaps even some high end engineering analysis
tools to continue growing our mind share in which ever market segment the site
owners decide to optimize the site for. All this takes money or at least resources
and resources must provide a return somehow to all stakeholders or friction
develops to the detriment of the robotic organism being grown. No good to
have brains if you have insufficient muscle or stored energy reserves to get
them where they need to be to accomplish self selected or societally pre coordinated
goals. So I think anyway.

I have been learning a lot about mechanics and logistics that will eventually
be of use in designing cost effective and useful robots but I fear that I have
a ways to go. Fortunately it seems we have many fellow travelors who like
the idea of using smart structures to increase humanities potential to implement
a true civilization in near space soon.

I take heart from the fact that anything that can be prototyped via manual
labor and effective organization can be programmed and automated for routine
implementation by creative software developers and engineering teams. It is
certainly going to be exciting working in and around the robotics fields of all
types for the next few decades.

The advances coming out of the military applications that we are starting to
see are going to be very interesting to apply to enhancing civilian productivity
as soon as sufficiently trained and responsible citizenry are available to be
entrusted with these genies ..... so I think anyway.

I am nearing my allocated time limit for this activity so I shall close by appending
the replies I made to a couple of thought provoking articles and questions that
were also posted here:

My immediate thought on finding caves was rather star trekian and involved lots of data processing
and comparison of
thermal sensing data and patterns.

If a more immediate solution is required I would think about designing a robot to crawl in with a
seismometer and
a satellite transmitter link. An F-15, F16, or F-14 could detonate a rocket at a laser designated
site when enough
of the robot squads were in place to take readings. Then the siezmotransports crawl on to the
next location and
wait for the next flyby or buzz bomb to impact.

Clearly there would be substantial attrition of these throwaway robots. Perhaps they could be
equipped with some
primitive arms operated via teleoperations (we would not want a kid to trigger an attack upon
themselves) or commands
so that if discovered by hostile terrorist forces they could take pot shots back and keep the
terrorists pinned down for
a while before attempting a kamikaze run on the nearest terrorist.

It is worth noting that such robots would have a lot of useful components so the design should
verifiably destroy most of
the most militarily valuable components or the terrorsts would soon be sending these back to
civilization's cities, outposts,
neighborhoods, and/or parks.

It is also worth noting that judicious stage acting would allow delivery of useful materials and
wealth to double agents
or freedom fighters in the area under guise of preparation for an overt U.S. military attack. While
terrorist leaders
waste their resources watching for paratroopers local freedom fighters might be eroding their
support base until an
almost bloodless coup or a final battle in defense of the free villages computer centers and schools
solved the problem
of thugs in charge.

Clearly once the thug governments are gone tactics will have to change so we are not arming
barbarians with advanced
technology allowing them to be more of a nuiscance than would otherwise be the case.

While an intelligent barbarian can probably duplicate anything in the field that civilization's
advanced manufacturing processes
can put out, it takes a lot of time and effort compared to walking into a military command post and
requesting a security
sweep of the neighborhood via robotic security forces because a barbarian was spotted crossing
the SOSUS borders of the
local parks.

I saw a demo in the parking lot of the local Dairy Queen (actually D.Q. out of business locally, it is
a local restaurant now)
of a small manual line painter that used spay cans to paint the parking lot lines. It was a tiny unit
and was powered by
a relaxed skilled operator taking their time. It looked like it might take all day to paint the lot (4
hours?) as customers
moved in and out but it was being done by a student and a coach or perhaps a contractor and a
local city official (my vision
is a bit fractal sometimes and closer I look the more overlapping fractal patterns and possibilities
seem to emerge .... kind
of an uncertainty principle I guess .... freedom loving citizens seem hate to being pinned down or
well understood by
the local busybodies ..... keeps life interesting I suppose .....)

If a remote controlled tractor and set of utilities trailors were developed it might be possible to
automate or comfortably
oversee many of the tasks that currently take entire work crews.

Also of interest is the fact that the parking lot was not closed. Apparently there was a high level
of confidence that
local citizens would avoid the wet lines if possible and that if they got smudged by accident or
inattentiveness that this
could easily be fixed or was not a problem. I did not look around to see if there were caution
signs or other signals out
to attract motorist attention prior to getting into the parking lot which was under construction.
Perhaps the work crew and
bright new pavement and yellow lines were enough for this relaxed yet efficacious private project
approach. How the
owner overcame fear of liability for others studidity to allow this project on their business grounds
I have no idea. Perhaps
they carry business liability insurance with an insurance firm they are comfortable will be their
obligations ..... how they
found such a firm in the U.S. rather staggers my limited imagination. Still, I was always satisfied
with Farmer's Truck Insurance Exchange in Corvallis. When one office treated me badly in my
perception I moved on to another agent and
his service has been exemplary. An employee had an accident in a company vehicle one time and
I never heard anything
more about it after I referred the child driver's (the victim, my employee ... think .... and I were in
agreement that even though
she might have been traveling with the prevailing speed of the traffic a bit faster than posted limit,
visibility was good and
he definately pulled out in front of her) mother to my agent I never heard anything more about it.
This despite the fact
that the parent stated this was her only transportation to work and support her family and she
needed it fixed. I never
followed up and made sure she was actually taken care of by Farmer's. I assumed that if she had
problems she would
call me back as she was aware that it was a company vehicle and that we acknowledged that we
were contributory
to the accident occuring even if the basic rule in Oregon says the driver must be in control and able
to stop their vehicle
at all times prior to impacting other motorists or property. Maybe the next time I talk to Todd I
will find out if the name and
phone number is in the accident report he filed. Way late to fix if my insurance agency is as bad
as some I have seen
but it would correct a dangerously inaccurate world view of mine regarding Farmer's Insurance
Exchange if the single
major accident I have ever been involved in resulted in the victim getting shafted like most of the
insurance scams/incidents
I have witnessed as a curious observer.

Anyway, back to the subject. Such a robotics tool sized appropriately might help keep taxes
down here in Oregon by
volunteers or training groups to paint roads as per detailed plans using recycled ground glass
mixed in white paint by
the county on demand or from reasonable storage. Citizens would want to know what high paid
county workers do
all day if citizen volunteers are out doing much of the work. It would be important to have open
houses and an open
door policy in conjunction with a friendly well connected neighborly work force such that local
citizens, taxpayers, and
commercial interests have a high degree of certainly that the community is receiving value added
back commiserate
with the effort of volunteers put in. There are a lot of organizations around who seem to exist to
waste volunteers
time and resources to little true effect and as a result Americans have gotten a bit shy of late about
participating in
volunteer and even professionally paid team efforts.

Another application incredibly useful in Oregon would be blackberry snipping and gourse
trimming. In the past and
possibly even now the State of Oregon and County Highway departments have expended huge
summs of money
spraying carcinogens and toxic chemicals on blackberries and gourse in a futile attempt to keep
them back away from
the roadbeds. This potentially results in poisened tourists and locals (where were your kids really
picking those
blackberries you put in their cream and berry ice cream or tarts?) as well as polluted ground water
and wild life.
I wonder if any of that stuff actually affected genetics of surviving species ..... I recommend against
Stephen King's
environmentally slanted stuff if you have an overactive imagination ....... one book of his I read
probably reduced my
hiking and outsdooring by 50% for a couple of years after I read it. Have to wonder though if he
has some good
points considering the sheer stupidly with which U.S. citizens are willing to cheerfully take Dow's
word for stuff and
then refuse to read the fine print and refuse to fund independent studies or revisit usage regulations
more than twice a
century.

I wonder if pharmaceutical company owners also own stock in big chemical companies? First we
poisen them at
a large profit by capturing American Farmers and using USDA to destroy crops protected by
insects prior to them
reaching market and then we make lots of money selling ineffective drugs that pretend to fix the
chemically induced
problems while creating side effects sufficient to encourage further drug use. Finally we charge
thousands of dollars
a day for the privelege of being warehoused in a hospital or retirement home until their money runs
out and then we
use the laws we purchased to require relatives to pay thousands for unnecessary and unnatural
burial services which
incidentally we can use to create future super fund sites.

I shall have to check further into this line of thought .... could be millions, thousands even ..... iff the
racket were
run properly. The thing I got to figure first though is do I want in on the action or should I make a
fortune making
noise and creating apparent motion that exacerbates the problems that I make a fortune talking
about? After all,
a few billion is not enough, I might need a few billion more if someone purchases a yaught a few
feet larger than my
own or lines it with platinum or titanium fixtures to impress the high society hookers and whores
with whom they and
I wish to associate.

Maybe while I think about this I will be more careful about washing my hands after handling the
roadside cans I
have been picking up to help finance the "Getting Ready" effort. Might be fun sometime to audit
the accounts
of the professionals currently spending billions to prepare the war machine that was supposed to
be ready at a
moment's notice at a price of past trillions and starving freezing amcits in the streets and see what
creative methods
(of reaching out to love fellow freedom loving peoples who wish to join the Terran Federation
while waiting for
the United Planets to get their act together) they are using in their black programs.

I trust that fair play and continuous improvement of processes and standards are the order of the
day so when
we Americans choose to allow them to shine publicly, they are proud of their performance.
Confident that they
did their best working within the initial conditions they were given and loving various lover's
suggestions if they
could measure or even suspect the anticipated gains sufficiently to devise safe ways to try it and
find out, retaining
options where possible to back up and try again.

Anyway. Cool robot ideas. We should consider adding telemetry and mainframe support so
that online tasking
and status databases are kept up to date and periodic hardcopy dumps are made either
incrementally or in their
entirety for military use by home defense forces. Perhaps the slightly obsolete material could be
given away to
the public for training exercises or recycled effectively in some other way ..... redline QCs could
be performed by
art and drafting classes in the field to verify that the teams actually accomplished the work they
thought they did at
the location they reported. This would also provided a closed loop system end to end check. If
a third verification
method could be devised then a high level of certaintly would start to exist that the white safety
lines on our highways
that augment night driving for older feeble eyes in the rain locally are actually in place and ready to
assist winter
drivers and tourists. Not to mention avoiding unnecessary off road accidents in the event of an
emergency
mass evacuation of a terrorist targetted town.

A possibly profitable way to begin implementing this might be to have teams of interested citizens
use the
manual tools to mark off start and stop points for line tasking for the highway professionals painting
lines
with the heavy duty equipment. As they get better they could start knocking off the small lines
and the details
painted on the road (such as arrows, stops, etc.) so that the county crews would not have to start
and stop
all the time when painting the highway lines between towns. Also line maintenance could almost
be done
fractally or chaotically by citizens out for long duration hikes if they used proper flagging techniques
and used
walkies talkies to tell each other to get out of the road because impatient motorists and/or
incompetent CDL
drivers had blown by the flag points at high speed. A cell phone could also drop a quarter or
two on reporting
license numbers and status of offending vehicles to the DMV. Vehicles with large patterns of
reckless behavior
might warrant a visit by the police of appropriate levels to remind the owners and operators that an
audit trail
of sorts is beginning to materialize and point out that civil courts do not require absolute certainly to
levy large
economic penalties if a jury becomes convinced that criminal negligence and willful stupidity were
involved even
if it could not be proven to the satisfaction of a judge and/or jury adhering to the higher standard of
beyond
the shadow of a doubt.

I also was shocked by the trade tower bombing. I thought our training program was far enough along that
we had sufficient
manpower to protect ourselves. I also thought that the Moslems had a civilization and that only a tiny
fringe was insane or
erratic enough to violate their own commandments against killing. Obviously I was incorrect.

Resources

I have made substantial progress on the resources issue here locally. A local group of businessmen is
working with me to
setup some cottage manufacturing capabilities. We have an approximately 20?30X100?200 sqare feet
plus a local buddyy
of mine has been colllecting and refurbishing heavy duty work working machine tools.

I have started getting the carport sorted out into a sewing machine area in one end along with my mom's
automated sewing
machine I should be able to put some high quality emblem patches on the internet marketplace soon.

I have also found several useful ocmponent attached to spent water bottles and have begun purchasing
these consumables so
that recycling adds to my compopnent's bin.

I am now considering two different concepts from the preliminary previously discussed (sorry I think it is not posted
yet, I will try to
rekey the information I lost and get it into the project page.

Basically the initial concept was looking at a robust microrover with wireless link to the interact and a remote
supercomputer if I can
get beawolf working on our local net. Speaking of which, I will be traveling for a couple of weeks so entries here
will be sporadic.
At least when I get back to homebase my brother will have our cisco router and subnet up and running, then I start
doing conceptual
work in 3DSMax models so I can animate the expected motions of mechanical components.

The two new easier prototypes I am considering to get started effectively consist of:

Collecting Human Factors and Interest Information

A wagon and some talking toys for my neice and nephew. They are approximatley 2nd graders and the research
requirements for this
prototype assembly will be to determine the range of capabilities on board to retain the child's interest. By going
with an unpowered
protoype and requiring the child the pull the wagon along if he/she want to we eliminate the potential risk of the
child feeling trapped
or spied upon by their esm (star mule extraordinary) companion. The final unit must incorporate the features
demaned to maintain the
child's interest. We should also leave the tow bar/handle/leash function so that if the self motivation energy is
running low the esm
with its load may be pulled by its human owner or a truck as appropriate to the unit's size and function.

I think that much of this information should be very similar for similar robuts. Since my niece and nephew are
in Texas and I am usually in Idaho or Oregon I will probably look around online to see if I can find information that
is applicable without doing all my own research.

Developing Some Personnel Skills and Understanding of the ESM Line Functional and Manufacturing
Requirements.

Use some tin snips and steel edges and hinges to create tiny robot parts out of recycled aluminums cans and
plastic. The
unit should be big enough to use an onboard electronics package in common with the entire mid section of the
final
line.
(child buddy to light industrial or packpack). This should allow me to build a unit large enough to use cots
(commercial
off the shelf) for the electronics components.

sashi ono Sound like a good cheap prospect for some
electronics
for my prototypes. Might be a bit expensive in the long run for the lighter units in the toy/domestic market.

kerap Hi kerap, I hope things are going
well
for you. I had a successful meeting with my sponsor and some of his associates (I have been sponsored to study
open paradigms as applicable to long term commercialization potential by my brother.) He has no personal
interest in
robotics at this time but he agreed that participation here might be a way to get in on a leading technology edge if
robotics
go small and cheaply mass produced soon. If you would like to discuss your resource problems further in private
feel free to contact me at mri_icboise@surfbest.net or lazyquasar@yahoo.com I cannot guarantee a response at
this
time since I do not seem to be recieving any messages at these two addresses other than cc material self
addressed for
recordkeeping and filing processes. If you put a paragraph or two in your diary here ocassionally I shall eventually
catch up with it. I am sorry but if I do not hear from you within a few weeks then I feel the most appropriate thing
for
me to do is decertify you. I wish you luck in future endeavers, perhaps we shall cross paths again. I hope so, we
really need some small cheap robots and low end low cost prototyping by interested people seems to be the best
way for the field to advance in ways useful to small open entrepreneurs.

gnome.org This open source software NPO has a working model set up
showing how a large and growing online community sharing common interests can organize and government
themselves for the benefit of larger projects.

I am extremely interested in your robots. I am committed to showing some results
before I can get the AIAA and other U.S. PE whores to commit to tutoring all
comers who are willling to try and pull their weight while studying mathematics and
helping establish a medical industry on this planet. The local bleeders are really
getting on my nerves. They memorized lots of organic chemistry stick models and
pharmaceuticals and think therefore that the scientific method is useless even with
volunteers begging them to (if they cannot save them) get the data and make some
progress. I tell you a story about a lover and liver cancer sometime, for now i
will stick to robots.

I am casing the local neighborhood with a view to resolving some local wars and
establishing a safe zone for a robotics engineering field lab where our Robotics
Systems Engineers who have high enough certs that someone will take responsibility
for reviewing proposals and resolving the liabilities to the extent possible when a
local toy robot malfunctions and scares or injures a local child. I have begun
interviews on walks to collect information on the inhouse local grievances with a
view toward helping resolve. Then I can go get a grant and put field lab in service.

I will be coaching the open entrepreneurs (if I do not find a site soon I will build one
with my brother, I am not really up to the security layering requirements, i ramped
up pretty high last time designing technologies applicable to armegeddon weapons,
there were some lovely physics. As a result noone in personal trust web really wants
me squinting and working, they want me relaxing and playing. I am not certain my
layered protections have sufficient diversity yet to keep nuts in ruts from self
destructing while taking me out. The fracture lines are deep chasms and the fractal
tendrils just now really testing the waters.

For example on the local radio ......... never mind.

My twin brother, a multiple certed allstar apparently weak in digital systems (after
3 years at Micron maintaining and designing chip line manufacturing automation
and 3 years as the network administrator Secretary of State of Idaho's business
records knowledge base .... big iron yeah right ... it is an illusion he and I are
careful to maintain just as he pretends that I am really a technical airhead with
handson is required. In reality we are coaching each other because we are
reinforcing keyed knowlege with loving care of each other sufficient to allow us to
function when the full spectrum analog universe multiplexing in to tell us to go back
to sleep.

I have a hypotheis that I was beginning to test last time around before I got bogged
down in high tech systems engineering and started optimalzying the deployment
schedules of our star ships. Forget entirely that starships are useless without the
medical and environmental and closed loop manufacturing and all the rest required
to support a civilization in space.

I was creating cancer as far as the universe may view it.

I believe the comet strike on Jupiter at this time was no cooincidence.

Just as the giants who came before us created training systems for themselves and
their tribes could see large pieces of reality or "truth" and codified it in the stable
religions and even bred for adherence to customs that seemed advantageous to their
faction .... thus hardcoding or biasing the DNA (?) the creator of this universe or
planet culture knows to sufficient resolution for its purposes when we are ready or
spoiled. Comet strike was a sign from the universe that we be healthy community
tissue or fabric or we be excised.

I think Tom Sawyer is correct, eventually we will know enough science to find the
designer's fingerprints.

First we finish triage, then we learn the mathematics systems of all those that came
before and attempt to multiplex them and scientifically test them in safe increments. I
am serious that I do not want to see a premature quasar in the local area, I am
confident that the creator of this universe has interlocks set to take appropriate
action if that happens. I have no idea what that would be. I know that if we are
worthy to be called to judgement instead of flushed, that I do not want to have to
account for leaving any more sisters, brothers, species, etc behind than I have to.

We are not expected to be perfect, we are expected to be trying our best to
improve while loving each other. For those incapable of loving yet, try being
as polite as possible and watch one of the excellent multimedia comedies, talk
shows, get out and walk around your physical neigborhood, join a social club,
DO NOT get isolated with your computer. You must be well grounded and
have fractalized trust certs or eventually black despair and mental health problems
of all kinds set in. You begin implementing improperly phased negative and positive
feedback on all around you and they begin backsliding with you. This quickly
destabilizes (inherently dynamically unstable) to violence and evolution.

The good news is we have the intelligence and ability to overcome this and help
each other with our problems. We all have troubles and problems, some worse
than others but not truly discernable from the outside.

Tell the cancer researchers (anyone who reads this and knows some to ask the
physicists and chemist to form an elite grandmaster panel briefly or in safe ....

ASIDE: Heard the mountain west clinical trial advertisment. I am healing myself
fine. You
guys better be designing decent scientific data collection systems in conjunction with
real engineers, medical combat personal (operations, all kind .... look for the combat
fatigue it is there, it was obvious in some places ... also that you were monitoring and
attempting improvement. We get you some real technology designed to your
operational requirements and it will get easier. In the meantime I will watch my
brainwaves and love (feul for thinking) supplies and you watch yours.

Feel tired then get out and play with kids, go love a colleague by brightening their
day somehow. Plan synergistically when feeling good to have SOPs in place for
ready activation when brain starts to wind down and you are losing your talents and
memories and ability to think critically. Try to do this in the real world local, the
internet is cold medium and virtual love taps are very weak octane compared to
our glorius ambient environment. Pet a cat till it perls. Squint your eyes at the
stars until they fractalize and you can pretend you are creating a supercomputer in
your head.

back .... tell them to consider that a correct particle signal sequence in proper cell
structure at the cancer origin might turn off the cancer. The patterns scale up and
down and out and in and around.

Only a hypothesis, very expensive in any measure of resources. First we must finish
triage and get safety nets in place.

You web rats or hacker elite or whoever is running the show remember that while
we are analog and inherently better (wider bandwith and signal can multiplex way
up and down and carry virtual channels via mathematical coding) these tools we
are building are much faster and propagate the knowledge over all 6 billion analog
server nodes and all the rest of the local life forms or "source, force, creation,
universe, god, etc." You guys get out an practice in the (warm)^infinity plus medium
provided and avoid going crazy, if we can finish these tools we are going to be
awesome soon or next cycle or whatever. Judgement day. Afterlife. All the
religious mathematical systems have them, that I have seen. The cults die out
because the corrupt self serving asshole at the center can not propagate anything
but another like themselves and then they in competition.

We learn ethical behavior in all languages and play fair then we all win.

If you hacker elites have not discovered that all genius has its own language then
buy some dvds, look around, watch an adequate parent compared to a master
teacher working a kindergarten or daycare center. Stop hiding out with your
computers and come out and help out. Web, net, and processing center masters
are desperately needed
but we test you well because communications is critical and dangerious position
and we are losing too many of you to get the grannies cataloguing their aches and
pains via voice recorders and analyzers into the knowledge bases for processing
by medical neophytes and rooftop supercomputers.

If you try and fail, do not worry, minimize the damage to life, yours as well as that
around you and love somebody else well enough to get back good attidute. Then
try again. More good buddies you have the more likely you get on stable course
up the slope. Need good support structure to deal with someone in despair.
Ultimately it is their choice but if we can strobe some love energy their way we
can get them out of their love think sink. Just not let them drag us in, call emergency
number and get some well trained professional rescue teams who have arterial
connection to our civilization's resources. One soul at a time. Tough nuts, get lots
of help when shining love at them from a safe distance.

Hmm.... robots! Critical path on some tracks that I have identified.

Snyopsis: A prototype opt in community of general population mix. Later we try
building specialized communities to isolate some factors carefully for analysis. DO
NOT try this without first having supermajority of populations bought in, it will lead
to factions and armegeddon unless done correctly. We are social animals,
generalists, specialists need generalists to stay well grounded. Specialists with
poor mental stability should be asked to consider whether they wish to participate
in the fractal distribution networks that the advogato and gnome communities are
studying setting up so we can get all our generalists involved and shining by helping
out. Likely a lot of new genius types that we have never even considered before
will be emerging. As open entrepreneurs are graduated they will be needed to
manage getting resources, tools, and services efficiently delivered to where they are
required. We be careful not to overload you with too much responsibility too
fast. If you think you have what it takes, come collaborate with an open community
that is interesting to you while you maintain your day job and meet all personal
responsibilities as well as you can. Eventually you will get the knack and begin
creating wealth out of nowhere. Like a majic trick, it must be learned and you
have to study but your mentor will help you out as they can using their resources to
the best of their judgement.

Soon they have more reliable data and safety systems in place to let them experiment
a little more quickly and effectively. You can kill a lot people with a million dollars
in this transition zone. If you get think lock then we/you are not quite ready yet, go
love someone else carefully or be nice to animals, etc.

Best etc. log into a web site that is managing fractal distribution systems so that the
kiddies and the offline can get just enough resources to succeed spectacularly.

Background links:

I get them to tommorrow.

I write grant sumary up tommorrow as well. Probably will not get the money yet
locally because my nearest kin have downchecked it already. That ok. I am
an irrational optimalizer, rationalizing synergizer. Had a good code once but I forgot
it lol, forgot the passwords too. lol

You stay in touch Nathan, if you can. I will be hanging out here for a while.
We get some design and prototyping done soon. The local neophytes and
masters can see collaboration in progress and perhaps we will start seeing
some information flow in the journals. We must organize our local community
soon as an open not for profit similar to www.gnome.org (that was a hint for the
true robot lovers, do not darken my day asking silly questions like what page
is my homework on. You manage your play safely and I will manage mine.
NO COERCION! Commerce is done with those you do not trust. We will
be working with recycled materials, how much can you lose if you address
it through fractal escrow and it is pre-empted for elsewhere? If you lose trust
in your teammates it will not bode well for your projects. There will be thieves
and trolls here because:

1.) It is an open site.
2.) I will plant them myself to identify snakes before they do too much
damage on their schedule instead of mine.
3.) Big guys will be testing to see if I can be trusted with as much responsibility
as I have chosen to take upon myself.
4.) If this site becomes a potential problem it will be shut down, I have
demonstarted to the powers that be that they will not be lazy like me unless
they are as good as me or better.
5.) We are getting fun competitions organized to keep interest up and show
off our marvelous stuff by delivering results to our buddies in other sectors.
Pickup men delivering our raw materials need some some too. We show
up with some remotely driven expendable teleoperated shell driven by
kiddies at an amusement park with a mission to pickup U.S.G. field rations
for delivery to troll stations and troll brigdes already in place in some parks
and the truckers will like it. They good guys and all know somebody like
me that goes wandering around with camping and hiking gear with his Dad
followed by a prototype star mule extraordinay (sme cp mri @ sci.space.policy
in collaboration with good buddy sometime last year, all rights released to the
universe. I am going to time how it takes some quality animation with a
sme make robot buddy to show up from RSE teams to start showing up as
animation. 3D models make great conceptualization and design tools

All minors, under age of eighteen. Ask your parents to review the gnome.org
site organization and privacy policies with regard to minor and help us design
a safe interation and escrow system here at robots.net. You and your
parents must be responsible for your behavior and actions while you study and
play here because I accept no consequence. I very busy. While you have
fun remember to be thinking of ways to love buddies on other side of planet. A
lot of misery and think sinks left on this planet and they are each as potentially
dangerous as I am. So are you. Be polite and cooperate with legitimate
authorities or you will not like being at the end of the line.

Now fun part:

My design team is going to put the brains in realtime gnu/linux supercomputers
to help the local big guys (NASA, NSA, etc. accelerate open medical research)
by processing data for them at nightime when our solar powered robot buddies
bodies are powered down (gone to bed lol) for the evening. We put enough
power storage in to maintain internet link so we can join our intrepid wanderers
at their campfires or trollhouses if they wish to socialize or play online games
and training manuals or do collaborative design with us.

I want mine in animated 3D if possible. Go look at lazyquasar@yahoo.com to
see my buddy craigie's first cut at C33. Scale very large. The crew compartment
is two large Russian crew capsules. The unit shown is conceived as leaving
the center payload, wings, etc in orbit (IIRC) while the nose capsule and the engines
fly home. A friend of mine has a different idea at his information site ....
he into hydroponics and sound like a troll at sci.space.policy, he argue a lot with
Jim Benson, CEO SpaceDev while they sucker me into finding the resources to
get critical paths moving as fast as sanely possible so we space robot buddies can
have some fun and be productive in more important endeavers.

The software guys will be building tools for us as fast as they can, including 3D
animation tools, games, simulations for logistics comparions, etc. Design
Review Boards of diverse neutral grandmasters will be picking the best for
sponsoring. The rest of us must build and finance our community ourselves as
we can. Can be done. Just take a little effort from everyone. Look for little
things to do.

Datamining at advogato.org (mirwin, idot) will provide a lot of useful links and
big ideas. Think about ways to protype using recycled materials and begin
recycling. Look around for a virtual distribution site to find out how to help
get materials to your buddies. Watch for microbusiness ideas the open
entrepreneurs are putting out for homework and case studies before putting
their repuations on the line with a physcial startup being watched like a hawk
and shutdown when it gets dangerous.

Play safe, have fun, love your buddies, neighbors, and little animals and insects
and you will be a professional rse neophyte a lot sooner than you think ... if
the other economic sectors are as good as we are.

I be back soon to try to summarize my team's inital plans, meanwhile you
find some teamates and try to think of a robot you could give to somebody
for Christmas. If you have gnu/linux try to start using some of the existing
tools to produce engineering documentation. Maybe someone can post
some samples. Please only open/free material on this site until community/company
owner say otherwise. Ok to link to proprietary stuff. OK to copyright
your stuff and link to it. It will only slow you down and keep you poor but
some thing you have to learn for yourself. Do not take my word for it, who
am I? A person just like you with opinions and a little specialized knowledge.
You figure out what your wish to do and go for it. Play safe and legal or the
big guys will shut you down to a play space that you can manage responsibly.
Might be pretty small.

I look forward to reviewing some of the material in your journals.

love mike

p.s. I think wheels instead of tanks so sme (I will call mine rex) can be ready
to chase steve's robot in runathon. My twin brother, Ray, gave me an old
386 Compaq to use for mobile chasis. He also just finished refurbishing 20
piles of junk gutted pentiums into 10 almost like new for his local Lions club.
Since it will be another month or two before he and/or I are working this was
valuable care and feeding of one of his buddies. He not buy me anything but
he explain to me how to get ahold of 16 or 32 similar or same make obsolete
computers for the AI brain. Find businesses or friends or government departments
that are upgrading and collaborate somehow. Do not allow them to exploit
you too badly, we setting up good buddy networks.

Join one near you and encourage your friends and lovers to do the same in
some small way in area of interest to them and we get the flows moving soon.

I do screensavior processing for :

seti@home
ud.com (prequalification of drugs with good potential for influencing cancer)

soon:
fightingaids@home ??? not quite right, I google for it when a get a comptuer up

Do a little thing or two when you can. It adds up. Bug hunting with the open/free
source software crowd is good. Documention writing. Send them a love letter
appreciating what they have given you. If you like the tools considering donating
to their responsbile communities to help sponsor further work.

ok, gotta go now, I get more coherent soon. Gotta get a single set of internally consistent requirements
that meets all requirements in my head to make sense. I NEED the journal entries, I act something as
an interpreter to assimilate diverse information from multiple sources. You think your way, I think mine.

I love to see little perfect modular nuggets. They fit well in PERT charts and trade off evaluations.
They can be hard to come by, a lot of information from a lot of talent to merge into prototype
good enough to help build the next one. You guys get some skull sweat done and Nathan and I will
find knowledgeable mentors to help with rough spots. Meanwhile we have to organize opt in
community and possibly define how to interface with the site admin and owner. I have no knowledge
of how they plan to run and operate their business here at robots.net.

WhoPhlunPoo
on certification wpp I think it would help some
people get certified if they told us what they
are interested in and posted any link useful online
articles or papers they run accross.

At advogato where I
am a vocal and very slippery but fairly
slick paradigm of advocacy
for freeing commerce so we can get some money for goodies,
I found that making at least
a small entry each day got me noticed. This signt is
even better, link to a few sketches
scanned in or diagrams on a home page at yahoo is a pretty
cool way to exchange information.
I think anyway, I am kind of new to the internet scene.
Maybe everybody already knew
that? Sorry!
Some of us older dudes are pretty busy but can answer
specific questions pretty quickly
even if we do have to look it up after 20 years of project
managment. : )
Does everybody here know how to use google?
Realise that they can get downloads that read PDF papers
put out by professionals at
MIT, Nasa, private industry, etc.? I hope that does not
sound condescending, it took
me 2 years to learn how to use a wordprocessor and a
spreadsheet after the six months
it took to get the purchasing paperwork signed and
processed.
Worth it though, my next cubicle buddy at Edwards AFB,
Ridley Mission Control Center
used to do signal processing to find calibration settings
for the analog tape drives a
couple of times a year. Our processing data dropouts
were far fewer after we had
our zenith 100 (8086) online. lol
kerap What kind
of resources do you need kerap? I used to scrounge
pretty good at Edwards AFB maybe
if we discuss it back and forth here some of our buddies
here will help us out with some
ideas. It is amazing to see what 3 or 4 people can come
up with in collaboration. We
must have a couple hundred people here. Somebody will
have an idea we can use if
we listen intently. Take care guy.

While I was looking this article over I thought initially
of the pneumatic tank game my twin brother and I had as a
kid. This led immediately to arcade competitions with
little software tanks between me, dad, and Ray.

Then I got to wondering if this circuit could be used to
control the big transporter crawlers they used on Apollo.
Such a device might be useful in lunar mining remotely
from earth via teleoperators .... wring word can not
remember the preferred form. Of course all the
hydraulics, joints, and exterior shell components would
have to be ruggedized for the lunar environment but the
electronics could live inside an environmental chambe
provided for manual operation when desirable or necessary.

With the proper software safety interlocks we could charge
Disney to allow customers at Disneyland to operate our
lunar mines. Or we could establish our own lunar space
camp training facility. A friend of mine might be
interested in this. He has been tryig to get land
developers interested in a space simulation neigbhood
development right pioneering thinking people could live
normal lives while participating in training drills and
engineering development projects on the weekend or after
normal work hours.

I bet a mockup of either (lunar mining crawler or Apollo
transporter) could help him get a lot of public attention.
Especially if it was scaled to match these guys prototype:
VTVL
controller prototype testbed.

I better send him an email with a link to here. He will
like this site anyway. Coincidentally his name is Rex as
well. I do not know if he ever read Lester Del Rey, he is
a bit older than I and may have been scrambling to make a
living when it came out. Maybe I will send him a copy
for Christmas. I will send a copy of this email to myself
to remember to put idea in my calender on linux desktop if
I can figure it out.

Anyway I have not committed to a project yet, but I have
visions of a couple of thin hp boxes on top of four tank
tracks controlled by a derivative of this circuit link to
a internet radio transmitter. ... Challenging, I would
have to dig out some engineering books. I have not done
serious electronics analysis since efundies.

Hey! Maybe I get my college roomie to check out this site!
He is double EE PE! We see how much he actually learned
while working at Oremet Titanium! lol Of course he same
of me when we have to figure out the pneumatics. lol We
could both journal here to exchange design information. I
have to check out the project room or page but at worst we
should be able to link to yahoo or space elswhere with our
uploaded diagrams and specifications.

BTW I just dropped by to share with you all this
OUTSTANDING tool I just found. It is called dia (for
Diagram) and is found on the program/application item of
the footprint. It looks fairly complete. It should
enable some nice looking diagrams of all kinds to present
designs to buddies for evaluation and comment. Not to
mention help with the analysis. There are so many
disciplines involved with space stuff that frequent
coordination is required with trusted associates to verify
designs are adequate in all aspects. Tradeoffs are often
required to get a working system.

Rex, (my buddy not me) I am sure you will have noticed
that as we discussed (I think) this could easily begin
generating revenue from theme parks connected to a
prototyping facility or even an actual mine via the
Internet if proper safety interlocks and realtime timing
constraint/handshake cutouts are present along with
standard manual override linked to industrial emergency
all stop.

Oh! Also, I think I found a revenue model that might work
in the long term to allow the community to raise money for
site operations and maybe even sponsoring selected team
projects that will build our community prestige. This
could eventually help our members with getting
scholarships, help or sponsorship from various nonprofits
or government grants, jobs in robots (Robots.net,
Journeyer) look good to many companies if our robots look
good in press, documentation and analysis is professional
grade and useful, and our mutual feedback assessments of
each other are obviously authentic, accurate, helpful
training feeback in a variety of interesting areas useful
to robots.

I will post a link here to the revenue model when I get it
polished up.

steve Sounds like a
challenging project, very worthy of a master. I wonder if
it would make sense to establish a
hardware exchange listing or parts bin where we help out
fellow robot builder with cheap or free
parts? Shipping & Handling might make this ineffective
initially for widely dispersed teams or robot
buddies for some kinds of parts. However, a lot of
specialized parts that can get very expensive
can be relatively cheap to ship.

Project leaders and development personal would have to get
some parts lists or BOMs (Bill of
Materials) put together and get them posted and linked to
from the project pages or diary entries to
make this effective.

The site might put together a list of commonly useful parts
and if we can figure out how to fund it
provide an actual physical "parts bin" that would be useful
when our community chooses to sponser
projects. Perhaps a reasonable markup on donated
components sold through a site web store could
help finance ongrowing growth and activites sponsored or
undertaken by our community.

Let me know what you think, I am interested in learning what
works and does not work in building
community centered sites for businesses and public service
organizations. OOPS! Gotta go check and make sure my home
page link and email address are here. My new mail drop is
lazyquasar( appropriate symbol )yahoo.com and it seems to
be working. Although I have not gotten any spam yet so it
may not be reliable yet.

I currently have access to quite a few obsolete motherboards
and computer cards as my brother is
rebuilding scrap systems for his Lions Club to donate around
locally.

Also I know some engineers who might willing to approach
employers about postage to get
obsolete of past shelf life components to worthy projects in
exchange for
listing as donors .... PR? Something.
For example a friend recently shipped me a micron portable
pentium because he dropped it and
cracked the screen ..... or his best half would not let him
upgrade
.... who knows? LOL I know it might be a
good brain for a robot with a suitably stripped down and
connected software suite. It is spoken for
already but accident happen all the time and most
professionals I know upgrade every couple of
years. With proper software tools would make excellent
software development station. I used to
program PLC controlled pump stations ladder logic
development on 286s. The good old days ....
bullshit! Give me a dual Pentium III at 700 Mhz or better
ASAP. Still it can be done with less in
necessary, we used to.

edleighton I tried to
check out mach II but I had trouble loading the site. I am
stuck with a 28K modem for a few days so
it could have been my problem. I will check back soon. :
)

This looks like it could grow into an exciting online
virtual community site and I think I would like to
be a part of it for a while. Did anyone catch the
reference to Lester Del Rey's friendly robot Rex?
If so, be discrete if sensitive about your age. LOL

Status Update on TBD Robotics Projects

Well I better go clear some space in the garage and look
around for some scrap that might be useful
for a robot. I am thinking about whether I will to start
will a mobile unit or go with a stationary
manufacturing arm and rig up access to a small machine tool
platform. Either a small lathe or a
milling machine. The idea would be to be able to have the
robot automatically manufacture small
plastic, wood or aluminum parts for cottage manufacturing of
kits for sale on open engineering sites.
Pros and cons both ways.

Oh yeah! Progress of sorts. This is the first online
interaction I have had on a linux box. I am
converting over to open source software where possible and
this should greatly accelerate my
learning for robotics since I intend to use realtime
versions of linux for my operating systems. Now
to find some decent free software CAD and other engineering
tools. I will be using open office for
my BOMs (Bill of materials, stuff needed to manufacture
known configurations) so I am going now
to download that and install it. Wish me luck! It is
going well today. Who know what else might
happen while the universe is smiling on me and my
projects? : )

I have long been interested in robots but never really made the opportunity to pursue this interest. Perhaps it is
time to change this. I have been investigating ways to tailor the open source software paradigm to engineering
projects that might be useful in advancing technologies useful to future space settlements. A robot would
certainly
provide some hands on excitement and serve as a testbed for some engineering projects when I get an open
engineering site up.

I have access to all the software tools I need and some obsolete 486s and even 586s available. I also spotted an
open engineering site that may provide some software components that would be useful .... let me go get the link
in case
anybody is interested ...... opencontrol.org I would think the command
processor and related realtime control functions for a spacecraft would be directly to applicable to a robot. Note
this stuff is open source so if you have the proper language tools to compile it then it should be pretty
inexpensive.

Anyway I have several slimline 486s that might make good chassis. I shall have to look around for servo motors
... my brother has been talking about a robotic lawnmower ... LOL perhaps I can get him interested in some
prototyping?